There and Back Again

Last Friday, my sister and I went to Barnes and Noble and as usual, I was sucked into buying the on-sale books that I will forget to read later on or forget I even own. Anyway one such book is called Kokology: The Game of Self-Discovery by Tadahiko Nagao and Isamu Sato. The book defines Kokology as “a series of psychological games designed to reveal hidden attitudes about sex, family, love, work and more.” In the pages of the book are a series of situations, games, tests, whatever you want to call it, that’s designed to make you ponder such things as, “what would you do if this and that happened” or the all-too-famous scenario of “you’re going down a long flight of stairs, what is waiting for you at the bottom of the stairs?” The kind of questions your distant friends like to forward to you as an e-mail attachment. The kind that tend to bug me sometimes for its predictable psycho babble. Anyway, in the pages following the scenario you’ve chosen, the meaning of your reaction or answer to the scenario is analyzed and explained. The analysis of course, makes you ponder some more whether or not the interpretation really does speak of your hidden attitudes towards sex, family, love, work and more or not. Below is the first “test” off of this book that I took and what my choice meant and what I think of its interpretation. I doubt it reveals a whole lot of my hidden desires…

You’ve just bought a copy of a popular weekly magazine and taken it home to read. How do you go through the features inside?

1. Read the whole magazine in order from first page to last.
2. Jump straight to the articles that you know will interest you and read only them.
3. Flip randomly through the pages and read anything that seems worthwhile.
4. As long as the format hasn’t changed, you’d read the features in the same order as you always do.

My answer was #2 - jump straight to the articles that I know will interest me. I assume these articles are the reason I bought the magazine in the first place. The book says the way I budget my reading time reveals my approach to handling resources, especially money. So what does my choice mean?

It means money burns a hole in my pocket. When I have it, I tend to spend it immediately on anything that catches my fancy. I save for awhile and then I’m off to the ATM to use most of it up. Somewhat true, mostly when I was younger but not so much now that I am older, paying for a house and paying for a car. There are still the occasional impulsive buying - this Kokology book is proof - which I do only when I know I have extra money to spare that I should really be saving for the rainy days. But what the heck, some things just really call out to you from the shelf. For the most part, I do make every effort to save my money but usually, when I’ve saved enough money I’m off to some fun vacation and the savings go towards that trip. Not a waste of money, in my opinion because that was my purpose for saving it in the first place.

So I guess the analysis hit the mark somewhat. Points for the book. ‘Guess impulsively buying the Kokology book is good towards something after all.

Until next entry…